Their very lives were not secure.
Agrippa Posthumus and Nero, the brothers of the Emperor Caligula, had been so reduced by starvation that both of the wretched youths had been driven to support life by eating the materials with which their beds were stuffed.

The Emperor Caius had once asked an exile, whom he had recalled from banishment, in what manner he had been accustomed to employ his time on the island.

"I used," said the flatterer, "to pray that Tiberius might die, and that you might succeed." It immediately struck Caius that the exiles whom he had banished might be similarly employed, and accordingly he sent centurions round the islands to put them all to death.

Such were the miserable circumstances which might be in store for a political outlaw.[30] If we imagine what must have been the feelings of a d'Espremenil, when a _lettee de cachet_ consigned him to a prison in the Isle d'Hieres; or what a man like Burke might have felt, if he had been compelled to retire for life to the Bermudas; we may realize to some extent the heavy trial which now befel the life of Seneca.
[Footnote 30: Among the Jews the homicides who had fled to a city of refuge were set free on the high priest's death, and, in order _to prevent them from praying for his death_, the mother and other relatives of the high priest used to supply them with clothes and other necessaries.

See the author's article on "Asylum" in Kitto's _Encyclopedia_ (ed.